The uploader says: “While i was practicing i noticed that my cat seemed very interested in the metronome, so i placed it on the floor and here’s the result!”
The metronome is really tweaking out this cat.
Month: February 2011
Time Killer For The Day
Vroom is one of those physics-based puzzle games that will kill off a bunch of your day, if you’re not careful. The premise, as usual with these types of games, is pretty simple: Get the truck to the finish line, collecting all the stars. Sounds simple, but gets pretty tough pretty quick.
A Foot Of Snow, Power Outages, and a Dead Router
What a day. A metric crapload of wet snow pummeled the area. All the Bend schools canceled classes, Redmond didn’t cancel their schools, realized their mistake and my power was out for a couple hours this morning. It’s a mess, and it took nearly two hours for me to get my driveway cleared because of all the moisture in the snow (worked on it during the power outage, since I couldn’t work from home, like I planned). I didn’t even attempt to make it out of my neighborhood, as my car is too low to the ground to even try with the thick snow (they don’t plow my street). The power came off and on a couple times this morning, which I think caused a surge to go up one of my lines, as my always bullet proof WRT54GL router (running DD-WRT, of course) is now dead. I had an old wired router that I’m running off now with a bunch of cables running all over the place, but you don’t realize how much you miss wireless on a laptop until it’s gone (I have ethernet running to other computers in the house already, so they’re fine). Looks like I need to get a new router ordered. I’m pretty sure I’ve had that WRT54GL since I had my back surgery, so it’s probably due to be replaced anyway — I can finally get myself an 802.11n router. (Edit, after looking through my records: I’ve had that Linksys router more recently than that. I had an old crappy D-Link prior to that.)
Everybody surviving the storm?
Mario Kart Is Back
I linked to this guy’s previous video before, but I’m at work, too busy to find it and link back to it, but wanted to share this, as it’s hilarious:
Reading Material
- ahumanright.org plans to buy satellite and provide free Internet access for entire world.
- There had been rumors about this for years, but it does apparently exist: The Nazi graphics standards manual.
- Gawker’s design, while new, still has the original logo.
- How did WordPress win? A good read for folks who have followed the rise of WordPress. There’s some good reading there.
- I don’t read Penny Arcade much (it’s a good comic, and they do a ton of great charity work), but this timeline of the Dickwolves fiasco is entertaining.
- A look into how Google makes their Chrome updates so small.
- If you have an AMOLED screen on your phone (like all the Samsung Galaxy S phones do, like mine), you can save some battery by using a darker background. Here’s the science.
- Planning a weddding? Google can help.
- Former Big Picture blogger’s new site In Focus is now up and running.
- An interesting look at the fingerprints left on an iPad after using certain apps.
- If I’m ever in New York (which likely won’t happen anytime soon), I’d make a point to check out this amazing locksmith.
- Hash-bangs are breaking the web (and I didn’t realize, but he’s right: They are causing browser and servers to work harder to deal with those things).
- If you’re trying to avoid the FourSquare crowds checking in at your favorite place in London, use this tool to avoid them. It’s anti-social software. This tool really needs to expand outside of London. Full story.
- If you’re wanting to lock down your Google account further, Google now has a two step verification option.
- Want to get a read on somebody on you first date? Ask these questions to find out what you really want to know (from drug usage, political/religious affiliation, etc…).
- This could take a while: A project to remove all visual advertising from Time Square.
- Save yourself some airline hours: Visit some of the world’s best art museums with Google’s Art Project.
- CleverBot is a fun toy, and the conversation you can have with it are entertaining, as this Reddit thread shows.
- Want to make your own Coke? Here’s the recipe.
- Readability is a bookmarklet I use frequently, and the latest version has a membership subscription model that’s will pay publishers.
Time Killer For The Day
I think I’ve linked to something similar to this before, but I honestly can’t remember. typrX is a multi-player typing game that allows players to compete against each other over the Internet. I managed to get 71-ish wpm the couple times I did it late last week.
New Math Is Stupid Math
My oldest daughter is working on long division in her math class. This is their new method they’re learning to do it (sorry about the poor quality — it was a crappy phone cam image and then I tried to make it more readable in Photoshop).
Now how does this new method made things easier? It involves several more steps, and gets a helluva lot more complicated as you had more digits to the dividend. And this is followed several pages of pretty pictures that is supposed to make this make more sense. As an old math geek, this personally makes less sense to do it this way, as it involves more steps in the long run. There are then pages of pretty pictures that try to make it easier, but it just confuses me even further. My daughter’s smart enough to understand the old-school method, and prefers it to the new-fangled method.
Am I missing something here, or does the attempt to make all math into pretty pictures just make folks understand it less?
Start Your Friday Off Right
With a bunch of Mario Bros. themes played by bassoons:
Thanks Dave for this.
It’s A Lot Warmer Today Than I Thought It Was Going To Be…
…but nothing like the 133° that KTVZ currently is reporting:
KTVZ pulls the data from the National Weather Service beacon at the Bend airport, and obviously knows there’s an issue. But it makes for some interesting graphs on the NWS feed from there:
Apparently the high in the last 24-hours was 176°. Looking at that graph, it looks like a nuke went off east of Bend.
Time Killer For The Evening
There’s nothing really new about this game, but I just like the title: Mooo!. And you get to roll around a fat cow.